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| - We recently welcomed home a traveling friend with a dinner at Teppan Kenta. Teppanyaki is a style of Japanese cuisine that uses an iron griddle to cook food (thanks Wiki). We were quite a large party (15) but they cosied up tables for us. It was a 5.30 reservation on a Thursday night and the place was empty for the first hour-ish. The stylish décor is lovely, with a huge chalkboard wall, dark wood everywhere and those retro bulbs that are popping up around the city. The owner is a former manager of Guu, which explains the shouted greetings and goodbyes, but the overall atmosphere of this place is more quiet and relaxed. The small number of tables adds to the snug living room feel.
First impressions were all good, which is why I feel bad about giving such a poor review. I tried 6 items and all were okay. I was sharing with someone and we had to order that many in order to be full. It really adds up! We had Seared Salmon with Ponzu, Ebi Mayo, special-of-the-day Lobster, Takoyaki, Dorayaki, and Teppan French Toast. Nothing really impressed me, which is sad because I enjoy these dishes at other places. My dining partner liked the desserts, saying he enjoyed the crispness of the Dorayaki buns, and the fact the Teppan Toast wasn't dry. I feel like the food wasn't the best in the category, but was expensive. If you can't make me happy with your food, you still have a chance to make me happy with my wallet! This alone was not enough to pull down the rating so low, but unfortunately the service was. Our dinner lasted about 3 hours, and this was mostly because there was only one person in the kitchen! That and the server made a few mistakes with our orders, including a forgotten order-replacement order-debacle, also completely forgetting who ordered what. It was pretty frustrating! Thank goodness they allowed us to linger. They also don't do split bills, so asked our party to write out their own orders on pieces of paper and tallied it up separately. Actually, that was nice of them. Maybe they felt bad for the way the evening had gone.
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